Monday, December 5, 2016

Buhari’s Python Christmas Gift To Ndigbo

By Ochereome Nnanna

The Christmas
season is here. In no other part of the country is the Yuletide celebrated as
much as it is in the South East and South-South (the heart ofNigeria’s
Christendom). It is a time when a chunk of the Igbo Diaspora returns home for
the annual communal and family reunions.

Even though it has long been predicted that
this year’s Christmas is going to be hard on all Nigerians because of the
economic recession (depression, some economists now say), something special is
in the offing. President Muhammadu Buhari, through the Nigerian Army, has a
special Christmas gift for the people of the South East: a military operation
code-named: “Operation Python Dance”.

According to a statement signed by Colonel Sagir
Musa, the Deputy Director, Army Public Relations, 82 Division of the Nigerian
Army, Enugu,
this operation has already started on 27th November to end on 27th December,
2016.

According to Musa: “the prevalent security issues such as armed robbery, kidnapping,
abduction, herdsmen-farmers clashes, communal clashes and violent secessionist
attacks among others will be targeted”.

The statement went on: “Above all, an elaborate Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) Line of
Operation has been planned during the Exercise. Interestingly, Nigerian Army
Corps and Services would conduct activities such as medical outreach, repairs
of roads, schools and other infrastructure across the South East Region”.

Before we examine the meaning and implications
of this exercise, let us reflect briefly on the army’s current operational
engagements nationwide, particularly the language in which they are coded. This
will offer insight into the psychological mindset of our nation’s elite
fighting forces: the Nigerian Army. Have you noticed that the motto of our Army
is written in Arabic, then translated into English as: “Victory is from God alone”?
I keep wondering how and when Arabic became part of our official lingua franca,
such that it is boldly used to write the motto of an Army that supposedly
belongs to all Nigerians. I thought English was our sole, official language?
For that matter, how did Arabic get mixed up with our national currency, the
Naira? What was the rationale for it, and when did we sit down to agree to do
it? Could it have been inserted there with the impunity of some vested
interests which has been growing wild of late?

Indeed, the Army has conducted a series of
operations in parts of the country. For instance, the anti-Boko Haram terrorism
campaign was code named: “Operation Zaman Lafiya”. It was
later changed to: “Operation Lafiya Dole”. Another one was named: “Operation
Shirin Harbi”, to “curtail
insurgency and sundry crimes such as cattle rustling” in the North East,” while “Operation Harbin Kunama” was staged
in theNorth
Westto
tackle “banditry, insurgency, cattle
rustling, among others”. All the “operations” carried out in the North were
code-named in the Hausa language which is widely spoken by the people of these
areas.

But down South, we have: “Operation Crocodile Smile”,
launched in the creeks of the Niger Delta, to “reduce incidences of illegal bunkering, oil thefts, piracy and other
peculiar criminalities across the entire region”; while the newbie,
“Operation Python Dance” crafted for the South East, is to eradicate
crimes already aforementioned. They were all code-named in English, our sole
national lingua franca. Why weren’t the operations in the South given local
code-names too? Doesn’t the Nigerian Army know enough Igbo, for instance, to
code-name its “Operation Python Dance”? I can’t understand this
discriminatory attitude here to our local languages by the nation’s foremost
uniting force.

We are talking about a country that belongs to
all of us equally, “where no man is
oppressed” as our inspirational former National Anthem nobly put it. Now
let us look at this “Operation Python Dance”. If you examine what the military says
about it, you will be confused as to what they really have in mind. Is it true,
as someBiafraseparatist
groups have alleged, that it is being put together for a sinister purpose? Or
is the Army making special arrangements, out of its newfound love for the
people of the South East, to ensure their maximum protection during this
period, including even repairing roads and schools!? Let us take the second
part first: that the intentions are noble. It is being speculated in some
quarters that the Federal Government might release the Director of RadioBiafraand
leader of the Independent Peoples of Biafra, Mr Nnamdi Kanu, after one year of holding
him in detention against court orders. This school of thought reasons that the
army is being put on standby to ensure that crowds do not come out to welcome
him and possibly cause a disturbance of public peace this Yuletide.

The truth, however, is that no army can stop
people who believe in Kanu from jubilating when he is released. No army can
stop the Shiites from jubilating when their leader, Sheikh Ibrahim El Zakzaky
is released. Others agree with the Army that the Operation is to keep citizens
safe from criminals. That is highly subject to debate. Why should the army be
mobilised against robbers, kidnappers and abductors? Is that not the job of the
Police, including their aggressiveMobilearm?
What are the local vigilantes, Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC,
State Security Services, SSS, and other agencies doing? Must we throw the Army
at every problem we have in this country?

Is the South East such a hotbed of crime that
it requires the Army to conquer it? The army is not trained to fight
crime; it is trained to kill. Those who smell sinister motives say that the
inclusion of “herdsmen-farmers clashes”
is a mere red herring. What we have is not “herdsmen-farmers clashes” in the
South East and other parts of the Middle Belt and South of Nigeria. It is a
series of invasions by armed herdsmen killing, burning and displacing local
communities for their cattle to feed on their victims’ farms. The Army should
have been mobilised long ago against these invaders to protect the defenceless indigenous
peoples as the constitution binds them to do, if the Police has been found
wanting. The Federal Government is more interested in cattle rustlers than
murderous herdsmen!

The fear now is that the Army is now on standby
to sack any community that decides to defend itself against these armed
invaders in the South East. The second fear is that in spite of the recent
reports by the Amnesty International (AI) that the Nigerian Army killed 150
unarmed Biafra agitators (which the Army has stridently denied) this “Operation
Python Dance” is meant to continue this alleged systematic decimation
of unarmed Igbo youth in the name of fighting “violent terrorists”, as the Army
put it. The SSS said it discovered over 50 dead bodies in a mass grave inAbiaStateearlier this year. It was quick in
identifying five of those bodies as those of Fulani men allegedly killed by “Biafraagitators”,
without telling the world the identities of the rest and who murdered them. The
armed forces and our Federal agencies of state security have given the people
of the South East reason to doubt the sincerity of their intentions towards
them in the past eighteen months, by targeting unarmed agitators for
extermination while refusing to protect local communities from invading armed herdsmen.
Let us all keep our eyes open and see what will be the outcome of “Operation
Python Dance”.

If this Operation results in a peaceful
Christmas season devoid of kidnapping and armed robberies; if it marks the end
of the herdsmen attacks in the South East, and if indeed the Army repairs the
bad roads and dilapidated schools, then the Army would have put its critics to
shame. In fact, it would be a rare special treatment for the people of the zone
which must be extended to all other sections ofNigeria.
We are watching how this python will dance.